1. Technical Field
This invention relates to vehicle article carriers, and more particularly to an adjustable vehicle article carrier for supporting articles above an outer body surface of a vehicle such as a roof or deck lid of a vehicle.
2. Discussion
Vehicle article carriers are used in a wide-variety of applications to support a variety of articles above an outer body surface of a vehicle such as a roof or deck lid of the vehicle. Some vehicle article carriers are adjustable via one or more cross bars which may be adjustably positioned along a pair of raised side rails fixedly secured to an outer body surface of the vehicle. Such vehicle article carriers are shown in, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,684,048, 4,982,886 and 5,082,158, all assigned to the assignee of the present application.
The vehicle article carriers in use at the present time and those embodied in the above-mentioned U.S. patents have proven to be very useful for the purpose of transporting articles which are either too large or awkward to be transported within the interior of a vehicle. Nevertheless, there still remains a need for a vehicle article carrier having a means for adjusting the position of at least one cross bar of the carrier in a manner which is extremely simple in construction and requires only a minimum number of parts to accomplish locking of an adjustable cross bar at a desired location along a pair of side rails.